Butcher, Baker, Tailor
by ACleverName
Summary: "The clothes are custom, no labels." Marie-Cecile Blandine's father is a tailor. He has an unusual client-the Joker. Set in Quebec the winter before the events of TDK.
1. Chapter 1

Butcher, Baker, Tailor

I.

It had been the coldest winter in living memory, and the St. Lawrence River had frozen over by All Saints Day. Anyone who could, put their skates on or went on sleigh rides just outside Trois-Rivières, but in rue St. Denis, the road seemed permanently frozen, lifeless, bleak. Cécile had stopped painting on the glassy windows with her fingers and steamy breath. She'd just gotten home from mass at Nôtre-Dame des sept allegresses and now had a large mug of coffee, sitting beside her on the listless window ledge. Her father was in the workshop and she, manning the front door to both tailor shop and house, listened for snow.

They kept the door unlocked, so she didn't jump when she heard it open. As she got up, someone at the threshold scraped heavy shoes, caked with snow, against the doormat. When she saw who it was, the _"Bonjour" _died on her lips. She stared and nodded toward the door to her father's workshop. She moved quickly without saying anything and took her father by the elbow. In normal circumstances, he would stare into her eyes to enquire who or what she was dragging him toward. But he didn't have to.

Her father came in the front room and held out his hands, almost a welcoming gesture, almost a warding-off. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged.

There was snow melting slowly in his greenish hair. She wondered if he was going to shake it out like a wet dog—it had happened before. "Mr. Blandine," he said. "Marie-Cécile." Involuntarily Cécile's lips drew back. No one called her that, no one in Trois-Rivières, and his American accent was so grating it sounded like a snarl, a mockery. Yet she was not wholly sure he did not understand French, even Québecquois, which was, an English-speaker had once told her, unintelligible in French or English. The snow was melting the edges of his makeup—a weeping Pierrot she thought, though sure he didn't deserve such poetic irony.

Her father tapped her on the shoulder. She looked. Then she stepped forward, interpreting. " 'E says, 'you're early.'"

The Joker stepped toward her, wet footprints trailing on the tile, the red of his plastered smile melting in the white, smearing as he moved his lips. "Never early, never late." He held up a purple-gloved hand. "Always on time."

Cécile noticed he'd left the front door open, and she muttered a curse, brushing past him and closing the door. "You could 'ave closed it," she snapped.

He ignored her, looking at her father. She moved protectively to the old man. The Joker shrugged off his purple coat and held it out. "I met with a little, ah, accident. Nothing serious," he said, as if either of them had expressed concern. Cécile's father took the coat and examined a 4-centimeter gash in the shoulder. The Joker grimaced. "Yeah, a _couple _of accidents." Cécile's father was grim, finding more holes in his handiwork. He looked at Cécile. She looked at the Joker.

"You want it repaired?"

"That would just waste everybody's time," he said. "I want another one."

Blandine's eyebrows furrowed.

"A whole new set, in fact," said the Joker, opening his arms expressively. Cécile looked more closely. The top of the left shoulder of his green vest had been completely split, and the shirt underneath was dark with what looked like blood. The cuffs of his trousers were ragged, pooling in the snow. An accident, indeed.

Blandine tapped her again. Others envied the way she could read her father's mind just by his looks. She would shrug and say, "_C'est normale."_

"You want it right away?" she asked, bored. Although Blandine's had always had a dedicated following for making tailored suits, their business had slacked off recently. Cécile didn't want to give the Joker the impression they needed him.

"Yes," he said tersely, frowning. "You think I want to stand around Montreal in my underwear? Cold's no good for the joints." He cracked his knuckles. Something shiny flashed in his fingers and was gone—a knife, she assumed.

"You could just _buy _a suit, you know, from a department store or something?"

"Do I _look _like the kinda guy who frequents department stores?" He grinned widely, grotesquely with the Cheshire smile he was wearing. "You're insulting me here, Marie-Cécile." She set her shoulders, galled by his sarcasm, but she noticed he was actually shivering.

Blandine cleared his throat, and Cécile looked at him. "Can you come back for it Friday?" she asked, as her father mouthed the words.

The Joker tapped his foot irritatedly. "Do I look like I've got the time to sit around twiddling my thumbs--?"

Blandine touched Cécile's shoulder. "By Wednesday Papa could do it." She couldn't help a small tremor in her voice: it was her final offer.

"See, this is why I love you guys," said the Joker, suddenly beaming. He clasped his gloved hands together. "And they say the French have no work ethic."

Cécile swallowed loudly as her father gripped her arm. " 'E's got your measurements," she said, her throat suddenly parched. She handed the coat back. "We'll 'ave to get started right away." Coolly she turned her back on him and moved to follow her father through the door to the workshop.

"W-w-w-w-wait," said the Joker, running up behind Cécile. "I want more pockets inside the coat this time." He showed his teeth. "Aren't you gonna ask what for?"

Cécile glared. "I can imagine." She nodded to her father, who gave a half-dubious, half-curious look over his shoulder, and went through the saloon doors into his workshop.

"Cécile." His voice had lost that sing-songy quality. She turned slowly around. "I need more of that stuff. That, you know, fabulous, wonderful, dare I say _magnifique _s-s-s-stuffff—"

She held up her hand. "Yes, all right, it's just to get rid of make up stains. It's not a miracle. You can get it anywhere." She sighed and was annoyed to be leading him for the—_combien, cette fois?_—time in to the side of the house where she lived, as she took the bottle from her own medicine cabinet.

"And you would know so much about miracles," he derided, staring up at the Virgin Mary in her alcove on the bathroom wall.

She handed over the bottle and crossed her arms. "You want the 'air dye too?"

He was admiring himself in the mirror behind her. Maybe "admire" wasn't the right word—he was gurning and glaring and making faces. "Cécile, so perfunctory," he tut-tutted. "I'd almost think you weren't happy to see me."

She shrugged. It wasn't worth rising to the bait. He ran his fingers through his stringy hair, still preening for his reflection. His teeth were chattering now, and she thought with a sigh of her own coffee getting cold in the other room. "If you're finished . . ." she prompted.

His reflection eyed her, then he took a deck of cards from his vest pocket and shuffled them back and forth. "D'you wanna see a card trick? One joker to a deck—"

"And 'e's standing right in front of me, yes, I know," said Cécile tiredly. "I know you take the joker cards out of all the decks. God knows what you do with the rest of the cards." She opened another cabinet and took out a plastic-wrapped Bicycle deck. She threw it at him.

He caught it and put it in his back pocket. He continued shuffling the old deck, glowering, before spilling the cards all over the bathroom. Cécile clutched at her forehead and muttered, "_ 'la vache!" _She bent down to pick them up, raking them in with her hands. "Your English may be improving," he remanded, "but your sense of humor isn't."

She muttered something with the words _"merde" _and _"nom d'un chien," _among them and threw down the cards, leaving the bathroom in a huff. With a curious look on his face, he followed her out. He put the bottle of cleaning solution in his pocket and said, "What do I owe you for the niceties?"

"Just give it to my father when you pay for the suit." Cécile was tired.

"You're so anxious to get rid of me . . ." he said airily. He moved slowly across the front room to the door.

"Nothing personal," she lied.

"Sometimes I just take," he said in a low voice. "Whatever I want. I don't even bother paying for it. The thought has crossed your pretty little Québecquer mind, 'why does 'e pay? And why does 'e come back?'" Cécile shuddered at the high-pitched imitation of her own voice. "You've trotted out all the plausible explanations, but none of them really feel right, do they? And I keep you on your toes, and even you, Marie-Cécile Blandine, you're a little bit afraid of me."

Cécile looked down. He had a hand on the doorknob, testing its resistance. She felt like shoving him into a snowbank, to see if he would melt like in _The Wizard of Oz. "Comme vous voulez, hein?" _

He burst into laughter, insane, grating laughter, and opened the door. A rush of cold air. He turned the collar of his torn coat up. "Toodles!" And he was gone.

**A/N: **Everything seems to happen in cycles. I knew I would enjoy _The Dark Knight _but I didn't realize it would have the same effect on me that _Batman Begins _had: thinking about it for hours afterwards, unable to sleep, unable to countenance not seeing it again and soon. The first thing I did the next day was go on and see if anyone else felt the same way. Obviously, quite a few people did. This introduced me to the great writing of **An Unhealthy Obsession, The Dark Side of the Moon, **and **Use Your Illusion, **for a start. (And Blodeuedd, I'm expecting you to come up with your Crane-fics like you promised!)

Obviously, and perhaps whorishly, my interests have shifted. I'm not discounting the possibility of returning to Crane (I sound like a wayward mistress, ha) but as his trilogy is somewhat neatly tied up, he may have to wait in line as I sink my teeth (!) into writing for the Joker. What can I say about him that hasn't been said already? Hopefully the story communicates what I want to say.

I am of course grateful for the authors of the above fics, especially Kendra for looking over this and giving me helpful hints before I put it online, and Kat whose story is not only phenomenal, she's a lovely person as well. :-D I have a road map of where I want this to go, and thought I had the whole thing done and dusted a few days ago. But now I'm not so sure . . . all good writing runs away with you . . . til next time, gentle readers . . . Hope you enjoyed this.


	2. Chapter 2

II.

She remembered the first time. It wasn't winter then, it was July, when she was still in school. It was hot in the city. Suddenly the shock of heat had been broken in two as if by a hammer and drenched Trois-Rivières. She wasn't the only one working for her father then. There was another girl, a real Frenchwoman, named Marie-Claude. She answered the door, typed things, charmed clients.

A group of businessmen huddled in front of the door that afternoon like preening peacocks, afraid to get their smart Blandine suits drenched. Cécile abandoned her window-cleaning; a dark shape pushed past the businessmen saying, " 'Scuse me, 'scuse me," in a hard American accent. A slippery, grating voice.

Marie-Claude wiped her hands on her Parisian-cut pant suit and approached the door. _"Eh bien, M'sieur, comment je pourrais . . .?" _

"Murray Clod? Or do you just go by Clod?"

Cécile stifled a laugh. The man was hidden by a huge black trench coat, with a copy of what looked like the _Wall Street Journal _held in front of his face. He was wearing faded purple gloves. Marie-Claude was unimpressed by the bohemian act, especially by his mispronunciation of her name as it was posted on her name tag.

"So you are American. 'Ow can I help?"

The man took something out of a pocket, possibly a business card, and held it up behind the newspaper, as if examining it. "The workshop of Mawn-sewer Bernard Blandine. Expert tailor of Trois-Rivières. Frequented by Canadian Parliament members. A real professional."

"Yes," said Marie-Claude chirpily. "M'sieur Blandine makes custom suits, retro, of fine materials 'e buys 'imself. Discreet, old-fashioned, and . . ."

Marie-Claude trailed off, and Cécile looked up to see why. Marie-Claude's face had drained of all color, but that only mirrored the one staring down at her. He had put the newspaper down, and there was something blotchy, nightmarish staring out. Cécile got over her initial horror quickly, though, and realized it was a poorly-done makeup job, a clown disguise. For what reason . . . well . . . Her mother, who had been dead a long time, loved opera. Pagliacci, the sad clown, who always wore a smile . . .

"Now Clod," the clown said, advancing on the pretty Parisian, "didn't your mother tell you it's not polite to stare?"

Marie-Claude was trying to look down, but Cécile could see she was incapable of doing so. "I . . ."

"Don't you people know about laughter, about being _amused_? Tell me, Clod, do I amuse you?"

Marie-Claude closed her gaping jaw and mastered herself, with difficulty. "I think you want to speak to the boss about a suit, yes?"

He chuckled. "Run and fetch him, Murray. Go on. Run. Flee. _GIT!_"

He shouted the last word, and Marie-Claude almost shrieked. She turned on her heel and moved as quickly as her spiky shoes allowed. The clown grinned sinisterly in her wake, then turned to Cécile in the window, who he hadn't seen before.

"Well, well, well, who are you?"

Cécile met his gaze levelly. "Marie-Cécile Blandine. The daughter."

"Another Murray!" He guffawed. "So—your old man."

Cécile lifted her eyebrow. "Like she says, 'e makes splendid suits."

"That a fact?" He curled a purple-gloved finger at her. "C'mere." She moved toward him, head stiff on top of her spine. "Take this." He handed off the enormous trench coat. It was so heavy she almost stumbled with the weight. She hung it up on the coat rack near the door.

The many years later, Cécile remembered being more fascinated than disturbed. He was wearing the palette of purple and green her father later composed his suits of, but everything was patched together from different fabrics. He looked like he'd gotten in a fight with a sewing machine.

"Classy, eh?" he asked her. "I do all my own sewing . . ."

She gave him a bemused look. Just then the trembling Marie-Claude led in Cécile's father. Cécile went to him and took his hand. "I hear you do good work," said the clown. "I'll pay up front."

Cécile looked at her father, questioning. Her father nodded. "Hey—Blandine. I'm talking to you. You look a little young to be going deaf." Cécile glared at the clown, then touched her father's shoulder. "I've never been ignored before," said the clown, starting to get angry. "I don't like it." There were spots of white among the red blotches, teeth that were clenched like the fists he was making.

" 'E can't speak, all right?" Cécile snapped.

The clown raised a gloved finger to his ear. "But muteness doesn't run in the family. Your father'd better say _some_thing before I get really ticked off."

" 'E _can't_! Don't you get it?" Cécile flushed. " 'E had his tongue cut out."

Blandine gripped her hand. The clown stared at her. Then he opened his mouth to laugh. "Don't laugh. If you laugh, I swear to God you're going to leave here worse off than 'im!"

"Gallic temperament!" the clown tsked. "Clearly, Marie-Cécile, this isn't a subject to be laughed about."

"Oh really? And what would you know about it?"

His eyes were dark, set back into the black makeup, crudely done. "Cécile. That name comes from the Latin," he mused. "It's the source for the word for _worm. _It also means blind." Cécile stared at him, stunned. "And I think for all your hot air, Cécile, you're a bit blind."

She was about to retort when he drew lines at the corners of his mouth with his index fingers. Looking closer, Cécile could see there were scars there. She could handle staring at a silly make up job, but the scars quieted her.

"Do you want to know how I got these scars?" he asked. He looked past Cécile to her father. "I'll tell you. I was working for a newspaper. I was a reporter, and I had found out all these juicy details about politicians being bribed, officials selling out, bad deeds being done, sins being committed. My editor said, 'you publish this, you're going to get the sack.' I said, 'I don't care.' The paper's financial backers said, 'you're going to get blackballed out of the city.' I said, 'what? Me worry?' The mob said, 'you publish this, we make sure you never blab again.'

"They could have . . . I dunno . . . broken my fingers. Or . . . cut off my thumbs. Prevent me from writing, you see. But they wanted something a bit more visual, that I couldn't hide. So they used a pair of safety razors—"

Cécile's father tensed, the veins standing out in his neck. He lurched forward and took the clown's hand in his own and shook it with conviction. Cécile knew this was remarkably like what had happened to her father in his younger days, when he was a tailor's assistant in Montréal. And for that reason it made him surge with fraternal zeal. For that reason, it made Cécile suspicious.

Her father elbowed Cécile. " 'E can make you a suit."

"Purple and green," said the clown, smacking his lips. "With a tie. And lots of pockets."

"You could dye your 'air green," said Cécile nonchalantly.

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh, I don't know . . ." Cécile trailed off. "I 'ad a boyfriend who was dyeing his 'air every week, and . . ."

The clown's eyes seared. "That's a very shrewd idea, Marie-Cécile. Maybe you're not so blind after all."

Cécile looked down, knowing that she was short for her age, willowy, and with hair and skin so pale she looked almost albino.

Her father tapped her and so Cécile said, " 'Ow will you pay?"

"Money, money, money," said the clown, licking his lips. He reached into his trouser pockets and pulled out a wad of Canadian dollars.

"What, right now? We 'aven't prepared a receipt," said Cécile, taking the money hesitantly.

"Keep it. Think of it as an investment."

"You mean, to buy our silence."

"Have you looked at a dictionary lately, Oh Blind One? That's not the definition of investment, is it?"

Cécile's father was trying to laugh, but of course no sound but a racking one from the back of his throat came out. Cécile winced, feeling herself die a little, and gave in. "If you come this way, my father will take your measurements."

"Oh goody," said the clown, rubbing his hands together.

"Who should we make the bill out to?"

The clown started patting himself down as if looking for something. "The Clod walked away with one of my cards," he said. "But here's another one." He handed her a playing card with a joker on it.

"The Joker," she said. He winked at her as he followed her father into the fitting room.

Marie-Claude quit when she heard Blandine had taken the Joker on as a customer. Cécile tried to tell her father her misgivings, but his conviction that he was a righting a counterpart's wrongs in the face of adversity and corruption, in a way no one had ever righted his own wrongs, made him abandon all sanity. And Cécile wasn't the only one who thought so.

Normally Cécile was meant to help her father with fittings. This usually meant she got groped when her father wasn't looking—and sometimes even when he was. Begging off for sickness, she managed to avoid getting up close and personal with their "unique" new client. When the Joker mentioned in her hearing, upon picking up the suit, that he was disappointed she hadn't been there measuring his inseam, she vowed to put carbolic acid into the green hair dye he'd started to wear. But somehow, she never got around to it.

The suit she and her father designed was a thing of twisted beauty. Left to her own devices, Cécile might have gone to design school at University and interned in Montréal, New York, maybe even Paris. She never quite managed that disappearing act. The Joker, too, was impressed, with her father's handiwork. So impressed that he came back twice a year, without warning, for his suits—all identical. Purple. Green. Purple. Green. When he tried to pay her father more than what they were worth, her father got angry. The Joker seemed bemused that her father's overriding principal wasn't greed. She hoped he would never find out the combination to her father's will: drink, wounded pride, bitterness with the world. A dead wife. A lost son.

Her father couldn't give voice to any questions, but Cécile could and did. Where did he come from? What did he do? Why the Halloween costume? How did he _really _get the scars? She thought at first he might be a gambler, what with the card tricks. But he was always alone. What did he spend his money on, beside hair dye and suits? She kept expecting the cops to show up at their door, with similar questions. One day, she thought, he's going to use one of those knives on you—or Papa.

And part of her put up no protest.

**A/N: **Thank you for the reviews, everyone.


	3. Chapter 3

III

Just wanted to thank **BallroomBlitz10, riahriddle, Locked Heart Ami, Kendra, RandomBattleCry, dead2self, somethingquestionable, Rachel, **and **Teachmesweetheart **for the reviews. I hope the following won't disappoint.

III.

He was to pick up the suit on Wednesday. She argued with her father when Wednesday came, but she almost always won arguments. He could only stamp his foot and, at the worst of times, make horrible noises in his throat. She always got the upper hand, even when he invoked the Virgin and her dead mother to his case.

So she didn't have to answer the door when the Joker came. She was in another room, listening. She imagined her father sternly holding out the suit. They'd both been working around the clock to finish it, even though her father was used to the construction by now—the colors and the fabrics never changed. Seeing the suit constructed piece by piece on the mannequin gave her an eerie feeling of seeing the Joker reconstituted in the flesh. It amazed her that her father took such care with it, as if it were for some Montréal businessman rather than a crazy _cafard _with a Pierrot face from God knew where. But, she surmised, her father always did a job right. That's what had gotten his tongue cut out.

"I'd like to try it on," she heard the Joker say. So, she imagined, her father would leave him to get dressed. Because she had refused from the beginning to help with fittings, pride prevented her from voicing her curiosity later in life. But, she had wondered, sometimes, whether the scars on his face were any indication of scars elsewhere on his body. The beat-up, bloody coat he'd dragged in seemed to indicate there might be.

He was in a bad mood. "Ah," said the Joker, and she imagined him smacking his lips. "You've outdone yourself, Blandine. You might even say it fits like a glove. Manufactured textiles from Hong Kong are not for me. I prefer solid craftsmanship. As one master to another . . ." He trailed off. "Blandine?" He snapped his fingers. "Not very talkative today, eh, Blandine?"

Cécile stiffened in her hiding place. "Hey, where is Marie-Cécile, by the way? I was going to pay her for some _services._" The lascivious way he said it made Cécile wince. "Blandine—Cécile? Where is she?"

"He can't talk, he can't talk, he can't talk," Cécile muttered to herself in agitation.

"Is she in the workshop? Or the little girls' room? Don't tell me she's on a hot date with some guy from the Stationnement St Pierre Rona." This time, his pronunciation was perfect. But it didn't matter. Cécile got up and burst through the door to the fitting room. Her father was supplicating and very red, stamping his feet. The Joker's old clothes were in a pile on the floor, and he was tightening his green tie.

"Stop it!" Cécile shouted in French.

The Joker looked her up and down. Her fist was raised, but she did not strike. She put her hand around her father, holding him close. Though he couldn't defend her, she would defend him. The Joker picked up his old coat and began transferring a great quantity of knives and switchblades from pocket to pocket, flicking a curious eye up at the seething Cécile now and again. Finally he fished out a wad of Canadian dollars.

"For my last trick . . ." Blandine was shaking his head at the Joker, brows furrowed in rage. "I apologize if my _tongue _ran away with me." And he stuck it out at Cécile, then licked all around his lips. Cécile set her jaw. She took the money and didn't bother counting it. "They always take the money," the Joker murmured.

"I don't think I need add," Cécile said, "that this is the last time we will be conducting business." She looked toward her father to confirm it. At last, at last the old man was on her side.

"Well, that's a real shame," said the Joker, fingering one of his knives. Blandine went white, but Cécile held her ground.

"Nevertheless, it must be," said Cécile. For a moment there was a tense silence. Then the Joker abruptly put the knife away and walked out the door.

Cécile let out a deep breath and hugged her father closely. They waited a long time before moving from that spot. Cécile looked at her palm, which was bloody with the nails she'd been holding against the flesh. "I'd like to burn these clothes," she said. Her father shook his head. Cécile shrugged. "What, you think someone might come looking for them? For evidence. Pffft. I still want to burn them."

She had given her father his medicine, and, despite the fact he had another suit—a normal suit—to finish, she told him to take a nap. She would cook dinner, mind the shop. He didn't even try to argue.

She'd gone to look in the cellar for something bracing to drink, when the office phone rang. She picked it up with a sigh. "_Oui, âllo_?"

"Cécile?" The voice on the other end was tense, like it was choked. She recognized it, with some difficulty, as that of Duplessis, the baker at L'Eskadel, which was next door.

"_Qu-est-ce que vous--?_"

"Can you . . . come over? If you're not busy. Please. I need your help."

The line went dead, and Cécile, though she had exchanged maybe a dozen words with this man since they had moved to rue St. Denis, felt obligated to see what he was on about. She pulled on her coat and entered the store.

The bakery was empty. No one was waiting in line, no one was sitting at the high tables and bar stools in the widow, Duplessis was not even behind the counter. The phone was missing, too. The bread was fresh and made Cécile's stomach churn.

"Boo!" shouted the Joker, popping up from behind the counter at the front, wearing what was surely Duplessis' big white hat.

Cécile tapped her chest where her heart was convulsively. "_Mon Dieu! _You! What are you doing here? Where's Duplessis? He said there was trouble." She looked around her. "Where did everybody go?"

The Joker tapped his chin meditatively. "I'm not quite sure. I came in, I was waiting my turn in line, when someone took a gander at my face. I really don't know what could have alarmed them so much. Suddenly the whole place was clearing out." He reached for a pain de campagne behind the counter and bit into it noisily. He said something else, but Cécile couldn't understand through the mouthful.

"Are you sure you didn't say something like, the next person who looks at me get a grin just like this?"

"I might have done," he said innocently.

"Why did Duplessis call me, then?" she asked herself.

"Because I told him to." She spun around.

"Why?"

"Cuz. I wanted to s-s-s-s-eeee you." He cackled.

Shaking her head, Cécile moved toward the door. Quick as lightning, the Joker barred her way. "Sit down, Marie-Cécile. Have a coffee. Have a croissant." He held up one in front of his Cheshire grin.

"I don't—I'm not hungry," Cécile snapped.

"Well then HAVE A COFFEE!" he growled, slamming a fist down on the counter. Tentatively Cécile sat down at a table by the window and sipped the coffee that was there. "That's better!" he roared.

"What do you want?"

"Just a little chat," he said, reaching into the glass case by the counter. He picked up an éclair and ate it messily, smearing the cream all over his face. "Away from Pops."

"What could you possibly have to say . . .?"

He threw the half-eaten éclair down on the floor and rummaged through his pockets. He threw a packet of cigarettes at her, which she caught. "Cigarette?" he said.

Realizing to balk was unsafe, Cécile winced and took one. She lit it. "Don't you smoke?" she asked in a brittle voice.

"No, I find it yellows the teeth," he said, and bared his teeth, already an acidy shade of lemon. "Besides, I've got more perverse vices!" He cackled and sat down opposite her, dropping his feet on the table, centimeters from overturning her cup of coffee. "And speaking of perverse, Cécile—what are you still doing in Trois-Rivières?"

Cécile blew a cloud of smoke into his face. "What do you mean?"

He coughed and chuckled uncertainly. "Well, I met you when you were a little tyke. I thought, if Marie-Cécile has any brain cells at all, she'll be outta this backwater like . . ." He smiled. " . . . like a bat outta hell. But I come back, year after year, and you're still babysitting Geppetto, and you're still making suits—"

"Don't call him that!"

"—so men old enough to be your grandfather can give you a nice looking-over."

She flushed. "So? What's it to you?"

"I thought, my little blind one, we had an understanding."

It was her turn to laugh. "You're crazy. You're talking crazy."

"I'm NOT—" He kicked her coffee off the table in his haste to get up.

"Goddamn it," she cried, getting up and wiping the hot, staining liquid off her skirt.

"You're the one who's crazy," he said, in a sullen voice. "You're the one hiding your smoking habit from your father." He waggled a finger at her. "And I bet he doesn't know about the trip to the abortion clinic either."

She winced. " 'Ow do you know about that?" He shrugged, scratched his chin. She took a deep drag on her cigarette, pretending not to acknowledge what he'd said. "I couldn't have a child," she said in a quiet, ragged voice. "I couldn't support one. I can barely pay the heating bills the way Papa goes through our money on . . . wine . . . a-a-and brandy." She waited for the mocking laughter.

"You should really be careful. Those things'll kill you."

She glanced at the cigarette in her hand. "What, cigarettes?"

"Pops. Family. Babies. Duty." He made a sucking sound on the inside of his cheeks. "Better not to have any of that."

"Maybe, maybe not." She didn't know why she was arguing. She should be looking for the telephone. Now was the time to call the cops. Now was the time to get out of this. Now was the time to pray to the Virgin and . . .

"What I want to know is who?"

"What now?"

"Who was the father? Of your . . . kid."

Cécile reacted as if struck. "It's none of your business, Joker."

He grabbed the cigarette out of her mouth. "Do you know he was unfaithful to your mother? Your father. Do you know he drove her away, before she went and kicked the bucket? He has his martyr act down, but you know what? Yours is even better."

Cécile hid her tears as she hunched her shoulders. "So?"

"That's the first step," he said meditatively, still holding her cigarette. "Toward cutting out your heart."

"Is that . . . Is that what you're going to do?" she asked at last, trembling.

"Me?" he laughed. "Cut out your heart?"

"I mean, literally."

He got out of his chair, doubling over with laughter. "Cécile! You're too much fun! Why would I want to do that?" He sidled over to her, and she shrunk back. "I'm good at cutting," he said. "I'd like to cut the umbilical cord that's got you trapped in this boring, asthmatic life." He took her chin between his vise-like fingers. "If it's money you need—I've got money now . . . more money than sense." He laughed hysterically and let her go. "I'll pay your bills! Didn't I say you were an _investment?" _He rifled through his pockets and brought out a wad of bills.

She caught her breath. She'd always handed over every bill to her father, she'd taken nothing for herself. She was tempted, and from the serpentine eyes looking back at her, he knew it. She feigned disinterest, moral indignation, looking at the sweaty, snowy money in disgust. "American dollars? Did you rob a bank or something?"

"Well, technically . . ."

"Keep it." She dropped it on the floor. "I don't want your stolen money."

He grabbed her shoulder and squeezed. "All of you, self-righteous hypocrites!" He practically spat in her face. He pushed her down on the table. Cécile let out a yelp as he held the burning cigarette end a finger's width from her face. "Maybe I should make you really live up to your name . . ."

"No!" Cécile cried, something between a sob and a command.

"No?" He raised an eyebrow ironically.

"Get . . . off me!"

"No pitiful begging? Not from martyred, long-suf-f-f-f-f-fering Cécile." He threw the cigarette down and smashed it underfoot, grinding it violently. "No—I wouldn't want two members of your family . . . disfigured." He leered. "Though you could do with a bigger smile." He reached inside both sides of her mouth and forced her into a smile. The thought of a knife slashing her mouth made her gasp in terror.

"But not this time." He tossed her away like a rag-doll. She struggled to her feet. "Thanks for the suit and the chat, Cécile. Got to run. Can't keep Gotham waiting." He opened the door. "See you in the funny papers!"

**A/N: **That was _supposed _to be the end. But thanks to **Kendra**'s prodding and my own freaky mind, I am planning a bit more in the form of a sequel. This can stay as a stand-alone, but if people are interested in reading more about Cécile, and eventually more about the Joker, they can. Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, hope you enjoyed, bye bye.


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